Debate Third Thoughts

I have read a lot of debate commentary, some pro and mostly con. Seemingly a majority of the commentariat was disappointed in both candidates, with the preponderance of their disappointment falling on the guy they didn't support before it started.

One of the more interesting ideas I read was that Trump was establishing himself as the alpha male in the room, which of course he did. That tends to be attractive to many male voters, and some women as well.

The management of Fox News said nice things about Chris Wallace's performance as moderator. If sincere, they were the only ones who thought so. Everyone else on both sides thought he failed, big time. 

I see the Fox News heads as feeling the need to defend their Sunday show host, and their own failed judgment in employing him. Wallace is as bad a mismatch at Fox as Billy Graham would have been going on the hadj.

What we all got to see was two candidates for the nation's (and maybe the world's) toughest job functioning under stressful conditions. That isn't an altogether bad thing to watch, there is much to be learned.

Our "World Number" at Risk

Writing at American Greatness, Christopher Roach surveys modern America and finds much about which to be sad. His base in Florida gives him a neighborly look at many third world countries. He sees many signs our great land is losing first world status and becoming a third world country.

So, what are the characteristics of a first world country, in the author's view?

• First world status comes from various political, social, and economic achievements. One of the more salient is low corruption.
• Low levels of corruption foster another distinct feature of America’s first world status: the dominance of the private sector and high degrees of entrepreneurialism.
• Another feature of American life has been low levels of crime and disorder.
• Political normality, compromise, and restraint are other features of first world societies.
• The American people were not just an assembly of economic units with nothing in common. They were a people.

And what are the characteristics of a third world country, again in Roach's view?

• The endemic corruption of the Third World both reflects and reinforces an extreme tribalism, which elevates the extended family above the public as a whole.
• Elections and parties reflect these ethnic divisions, and a winner-take-all spirit prevails.
• To the extent there is a private sector in the Third World, it is intertwined with and dependent on the political one.
• A related feature of the Third World is failing infrastructure.
• Yet another notable feature of the Third World is poverty, lawlessness, and disorder.
• A final feature of the Third World, now familiar at home, is high stakes politics.

Roach describes all of the foregoing, with examples of how we're becoming more like a third world country. And he concludes with this view of modern America.

This is not Norman Rockwell’s America. Indeed, it’s not even the America one might remember growing up in the 1980s and ’90s. It’s changed for the worse.

More important, the rules required to survive and thrive are quite different from those of the recent past. As in Venezuela or Iraq, politics and life are becoming “winner take all.” It’s important to know when compromise is not possible. And, under these circumstances, it pays to be a winner.

There are certainly substantial swathes of our nation where his description is increasingly accurate. His article is not fun, but it does point to our increasing national dysfunction, our inability to get done what needs doing.

Newsom Welcomes the Plague

Talk about headlines you never want to see in your hometown paper. This one is from The Sacramento Bee, the paper of record for CA’s Democratic majority.

As rats swarm California cities, Gov. Newsom bans popular poison to protect wildlife

Where rats swarm, bubonic plague is sure to follow. It is already present in CA’s rural rodent population.

Naturally, CA prioritizes wildlife over people. Being out of touch with reality is a baseline qualification for CA politicians. 

Wednesday Snark

Anti-racist = anti-White

Change my mind.

Raddatz on the Ground in Fly-Over America

At The Hill, Joe Concha summarizes ABC’s Martha Raddatz’ reactions following a 6000 mile road trip across the country talking to voters about the upcoming election. Key findings: people she talked to were concerned about the economy, but not much worried about Covid-19. Few were wearing masks.

Other findings: Trump supporters are more enthused about voting for him than Biden supporters are for their guy. About Trump’s taxes, Raddatz quotes a supporter:

Good for Donald Trump. As long as it wasn’t illegal, I want the name of his accountant.

The focus Raddatz found on the economy is important because polls show voters believe Trump will do a better job with it than would Biden. 

In my little corner of fly-over America, mask wearing is mostly something old folks do. The young and middle aged only do so if working in a store where it’s required to make us oldsters feel comfortable. 

The evidence suggests both groups are reacting appropriately to their group’s risk level. Covid-19 seems to have its crosshairs set on the AARP crowd, at least when it comes to deaths.

Debate Second Thoughts

Having slept on my initial reactions and looked at the headlines this morning, I conclude no participant covered himself with glory. Biden was weak, Trump was likely too strong, and Wallace was a hot mess.

The debate was like a Rorschach test, a blob where peoples’ reactions to it tell us more about the people reacting than about the candidates debating. It was ambiguous enough that people saw in it what they wanted to see, few felt forced to admit the candidate they favored lost.

Part of this pattern of reactions is the result of the debate itself, and perhaps a larger part is the result of our widely noted political polarization, which is currently extreme by American standards. 

I suspect if you could get people to tell you their honest opinions, if you could get past their defensiveness, partisans on both sides were disappointed with their guy’s performance. Both candidates are, in different ways, flawed men.

Setting aside their personal quirks, on the basis of their policies and accomplishments, Trump was and is my clear choice. Biden is disqualified by his allegiance to the Dismal Swamp.

There was one clear loser. Nobody liked Chris Wallace, who seems to be angling for a job with a legacy TV network where his late father and stepfather worked. Last night moved him no closer to that goal.

Debate Night First Reactions

In tonight's debate, Joe Biden only rarely acted addled. The expectations for him had been set so low that he exceeded them. I'm sure he considers doing so a "win."

In many ways Donald Trump dominated the proceedings - sharing a rostrum isn't his main thing - but he may have sometimes appeared a bully. He didn't obviously "lose" in any major respect.

Based on the above, my prediction is that the debate changed few minds in either direction. For the President this isn't great news as the polls have him behind by more than the margin of error.

Tonight's moderator Chris Wallace did not cover himself with glory. I do wish the President had said to Wallace, "You aren't very good at this, are you?" 

Tonight's proceedings certainly put the designated moderators for debates 2 and 3 on notice. They are going to need to get their collective game faces on. 

More thoughts tomorrow.

Hillary Accused

Looks like our 2016 intuition was correct. With stories like this and this circulating, maybe it is time to recommence the classic Trump rally chant.

Lock.  Her.  Up.

Jill Biden, Another Edith Wilson?

Edith Wilson, for those who don't know, was the de facto president for over a year after her husband Woodrow had a stroke while in office. At age 69, Jill Biden is 9 years younger than husband Joe, and substantially more "with it." 

Is Jill Biden another Edith Wilson? The pseudonymous Bonchie at Red State sure thinks so. He writes:

Joe’s wife, has essentially become the candidate. She’s doing interviews and rallies while Biden continues to hide in his basement. Is she immune from the virus or something?

If Joe wins the office, it appears Jill will run it, and him. 

Former SSRs in Conflict

When the Soviet Union broke up, and the SSRs became independent nations, Christian Armenians and Islamic Azerbaijanis were not neatly divided into two homogeneous, contiguous regions. 

A boundary between the two nations was established, leaving a large pocket of ethnic Armenians, in a region called Nagorno-Karabakh, trapped inside Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan claims to own the region but has had no effective control over it, making it a flashpoint much like Taiwan is for China.

Now various sources report fighting has again broken out between the two former Soviet SSRs  - Armenia and Azerbaijan - long-time adversaries. It’s said to be more serious this time with hundreds of casualties. 

Both historically and currently, for sectarian reasons Turkey has backed the Azerbaijanis and Russia has supported the Armenians. Currently the two larger nations are also supporting opposing sides in both Syria and Libya. In other words, they are in conflict, some of which is violent, but not precisely at war.

Their conflict has interesting implications for NATO. Turkey is a member of NATO, but the relationship is uneasy while Russia is NATO’s historic nemesis. However, in this conflict, NATO would be more likely to back Armenia and not Azerbaijan. Doing so could cause NATO to rupture, with Turkey leaving, something it might wish to do anyway. 

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Communist collectivities like Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union managed to suppress historic ethnic enmities which flared up once the suppressive force was gone. We’ve seen this in Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Northern Macedonia, Georgia, Transnistria, eastern Ukraine, and Nagorno-Karabakh.

One of these vest-pocket rebellions could trigger a much wider war. So far, we’ve been lucky.

The internal peace-keeping effectiveness of communism’s secret police and gulag wasn’t appreciated in the West during its heyday. This was probably because (a) communists kept trying to evangelize or take over non-member states and (b) they used brutal methods internally of which we don’t approve.

Communist China is currently using these methods in Xinjiang, upon the Islamic Turkic minority Uighurs there.

Poly Sci 101

The population of this great land is roughly 330,000,000. Of those millions, the number who intentionally and voluntarily pay more income tax than the rules demand could fit in one of the smaller venues of a multiplex theater. That number is effectively zero.

If you are concerned that the wealthy have tax loopholes and dodges that enable them to legally pay a lower tax rate than you pay, yours isn’t an irrational viewpoint. However, your beef isn’t with the wealthy, it is with Congress which establishes the rules by which you, and the wealthy, play.

Congress made those “loophole-y” rules at the behest of various special interests which have a claim on legislators’ loyalties. Those claims can be regional (think oil in TX or ND, tourism in FL or HI), “purchased” via indirect campaign contributions, or horse traded for in a “if you vote for my A, I’ll vote for your B” kind of swap. 

Congress can unmake rules which allow the wealthy to pay less tax if it chooses. Your job, and it is not an easy one, is to have more influence on Congress than special interests do. 

Good luck with that Sisyphean task. Forgive me for not holding my breath while waiting for you to accomplish it.

Choices

CEO of Whole Foods John Mackey said that our national obesity problem is the result of consumers making poor choices and indulging food addictions. Several SJWs went crazy calling him names and swearing at him for blaming the victims. Newsweek has the story. Here is his comment:

In some sense, we're all food addicts. We love things that are rich, that are sweet. We love ice cream. We love popcorn. We love French fried potatoes. And the market is providing people what they want. I don't think there's an access problem. I think there's a market demand problem. People have got to become wiser about their food choices. And if people want different foods, the market will provide it.

Mackey is of course correct that if poor people wanted healthy food and sought it out, the stores in their neighborhoods would carry healthy food. I'll bet if several people a week asked their neighborhood bodega for kale, it would carry kale. The local merchant carries what people seek and have the cash to buy, end of discussion.

The SJWs are correct that Whole Foods is not aimed at the poor, they are not the WF target demographic. It caters to affluent "foodies," "greenies," and those who virtue signal or culture signal with their exotic food choices. 

The sad truth is that healthy food is often not as immediately gratifying as unhealthy food that has too much sugar, salt, grease, and carbs. In a hardscrabble life with few joys, eating greasy/salty/sweet food is a little burst of instant pleasure. 

Pizza is an almost perfect example of unhealthy-but-delicious food - greasy, salty, and loads of carbs. So are chips of various sorts, most markets have most of an aisle devoted to them. Why? Because they sell, require no waiting or prep, and taste good. 

Sad truth. The same self-discipline that gets virtuous folk to eat healthy food also helps them be not-poor. The same self-indulgence that directs poor folk to unhealthy food helps them stay poor. 

More Zito to Enjoy

Salena Zito tells the stories of fly-over, rust-belt America. I experience her work as a happy merger of journalism and anthropology. 

In today's column for the Washington Examiner, Zito chronicles the political ground shifting in rural Pennsylvania. Several sheriffs - lifelong Democrats - talk about how their former party left them ideologically. They've registered as Republicans and admit they probably should have done it sooner. 

In their plaints I hear an echo of Ronaldus Magnus, who liked to say "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, they left me." Her column is a good read.

Trump's Taxes

The New York Times has gotten Donald Trump's income tax filings for the past maybe decade. Guess what? He has paid no taxes in several of those years, and paid little in others. How did he do this? Short answer: his business expenses or losses equalled or exceeded his income. What isn't there? Illegality.

We have written repeatedly that raising taxes on the rich produces little actual revenue. If you don't take my word for that, do a search of COTTonLINE for "tax avoidance."

How is this the case? The truly wealthy hire very skilled, high priced CPAs and tax lawyers to help them arrange their assets and income streams in ways that are more-or-less legally sheltered from taxes, or taxed at a much lower rate. 

Much of what you spend after-tax dollars to buy, the wealthy arrange to have identified as before-tax business expenses which become a deduction from taxable income.

The wealthy, who make most of the substantial campaign contributions, also lobby Congress for loopholes which the above experts subsequently utilize. And sometimes the rich take deductions which are questionable, and pay the penalties if caught in an audit, at which the experts represent them.

Bottom line: tax-wise, Trump behaves like a normal wealthy guy, and the fees for the above-noted experts are part of his deductible "business expenses." If you think all of this is an abuse, blame Congress which makes the rules the IRS enforces. Trump and, for that matter, Bloomberg take full advantage of those rules.

Echoing Officer Murphy, the old B-school prof advises, "Move along folks, there's nothing to see here."

Thoughts on a Prior Peace Prize

Writing the post below started me thinking about the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Barack Obama in 2009. I've had an insight I'd share with you.

Nobel's rules say the Prize is only given to individuals, not to nations. I believe Obama's prize should be thought of as the Nobel Committee rewarding the American electorate for electing a Black man President. 

I speculate Obama got the Peace Prize for who he is, and what his election represents symbolically in the U.S. and to the world. His accomplishments beyond getting elected were in 2009, and remain to this day, severely limited.

Trump's Hat Trick

President Donald Trump has just received his third nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize, the Washington Examiner reports.

President Trump locked down his third Nobel Peace Prize nomination after a group of Australian professors nominated him based on his “Trump Doctrine."

Professors and members of Parliament can nominate a person for the esteemed prize. Flint joined three other Australian legal scholars in nominating the president on the basis of his “Trump Doctrine.”

To which the Independent Sentinel adds: 

Professor Flint told Sky News host Alan Jones the Trump Doctrine is “something extraordinary” and is emblematic of the two things which guide the president. “He has, firstly, common sense, and he is only guided by national interest … and therefore an interest in the western alliance,” he said.

I wonder if someone getting three nominations in a year is a record? If it is, we can be sure the President will mention it. No doubt heads are exploding in newsrooms and Democratic caucuses all over the country. 

Afterthought: Hasn't the legacy media been telling us how unpopular Trump is overseas? I guess it depends who you're talking to there, eh?

What the Record Shows

Michael Barone has been a voice of reason in politics for decades; he currently writes for the Washington Examiner. Today he looks at what has been normal concerning Supreme Court nominations.

When a vacancy occurs in a presidential year and the opposition party has a majority in the Senate, the president can nominate, but the nominee is almost never confirmed. There have been 10 such vacancies in the history of the republic. Presidents made pre-Election Day nominations in six cases, but only one nominee was confirmed before the election. That was in 1888.

Presidents whose parties had Senate majorities selected nominees in election years 19 times, and 17 of those nominees were confirmed. The two rejections came together in 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson’s nominee for chief justice, Abe Fortas, and his nominee to replace Fortas as associate justice were blocked by a bipartisan filibuster.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thus was following precedent when he blocked consideration of President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat, and now, he is following precedent again by promising a floor vote on Trump’s nominee to fill Ginsburg’s seat.

Notwithstanding claims by Democrats to the contrary. All such are their usual self-serving lies.

So sayeth the “principal author of the Almanac of American Politics” which Wikipedia tells us “has been published biennially since 1972.” 

Very Weird Metabolic Science

RealClearScience reports the very odd findings of a study done at Harvard. The results were, to say the least, counterintuitive. The research was originally published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Researchers at Harvard University discovered that perceived sugar intake affects blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes more than actual sugar intake, at least temporarily.

They found that participants who thought they were drinking the high-sugar variant had significantly elevated blood sugar levels during the monitoring period compared to those who thought they were drinking the low-sugar variant.

In reality all subjects drank the same sweetened beverage. What changed was the information given to them concerning how much sugar, if any, it supposedly contained. 

The authors warn Type 2 diabetes sufferers:

This sort of psychological trickery cannot treat Type 2 diabetes on its own. A diabetic could not, on a prolonged basis, trick themselves out of diabetes.

As far as I can determine, the authors have no data showing this last statement is true. I believe they are wisely protecting themselves against lawsuits brought by the heirs of people who die after trying to "psych" themselves healthy with positive thoughts, instead of taking their meds. 

Non-Polluting Flight

United Press International reports aviation firm ZeroAvia in the U.K. has flown a six passenger Piper airplane powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. Instapundit, who provided the link, takes a somewhat dismissive view of the feat. He argues we don't have the nearly unlimited electricity needed to split large quantities of non-polluting hydrogen from water using electrolysis.

I'd argue very large photovoltaic fields could provide the energy which can create storable hydrogen. Such fields can be established in places where the land has little value and the sun shines a lot - deserts and near-deserts like the interior of Australia, the Sahara, the Gobi, the Atacama, and the American Southwest.

A hydrogen fuel cell's waste product is, I believe, water - pure H₂O.

The Inside Baseball of Politics

This close to a presidential election, an event that only happens every four years, one can hope to be excused for obsessing over the "inside baseball" details of politics. I just read a column by Steven Hayward at Power Line which gets relatively deep into the intricacies of presidential succession. 

There is a law - the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 - under which the Speaker of the House would become acting president in the event that the results of the election were still under contention and the terms of Trump and Pence had ended. There is also wording in the Constitution to the effect that no member of the Congress can serve in any executive branch position, which includes the presidency. 

Constitutional scholars have argued that, as the Speaker is a member of Congress, the aforementioned succession act is unconstitutional. It has never been challenged in court as an occasion for its use has not arisen and therefore no one has had standing to challenge it. 

Early in 2021 an occasion for its use could arise, and if it is then found unconstitutional, we could see a President Pompeo as the Secretary of State is the first among equals in the cabinet. Cabinet jobs, it is alleged, do not automatically end when the President's term ends. 

Imagine the turmoil if a "president" Pelosi appointed acting cabinet members and the sitting cabinet refused to step down, alleging that her accession was unconstitutional. You think SCOTUS has made important decisions in the past? Imagine living through this scenario.

Stay tuned. We live in very interesting times.